The landscape is changing as we approach the era of 100-year lifespans. The focus has shifted beyond simply living longer to "how to live healthily," with a rapid transition from post-treatment care to preventive healthcare. Gone are the days when people visited hospitals only after falling ill. Now, "self-care" has become routine, with individuals carefully reviewing their health checkup results and managing their diet and nutrition according to their lifestyle habits.
At the center of this transformation is the "customized health functional food" system. The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety launched this system in full scale from March 2025, keeping pace with rapidly changing consumer trends and technological advances. Customized health functional foods are products where experts such as pharmacists or nutritionists consult with individuals about their health conditions and dietary habits, select only the necessary ingredients for their bodies, and divide or mix them for convenient single-dose consumption.
According to recent consumer policy trend data, the global personalized nutrition market reached $15.5 billion (approximately 23 trillion won) in 2024. In the United States and European Union, private companies are actively providing personalized products and subscription services based on genetic information and surveys. In Korea, the importance of individualized health management is growing due to an aging population and increasing chronic diseases. Uniform health management approaches cannot adequately address diverse health conditions and lifestyle habits.
In line with these trends, the customized health functional food system presents a new health management paradigm that enables personalized care tailored to individual health and lifestyle while ensuring safety. Although more than 40,000 types of health functional foods are already on the market, few consumers know exactly which ones they truly need. Customized health functional foods allow consumers to purchase products perfectly suited to them in single-serving units with expert guidance, enhancing convenience and cost-effectiveness while helping prevent side effects from overconsumption.
According to a consumer awareness survey last year, 77.4 percent of respondents indicated willingness to use customized health functional foods in the future, showing that seven out of ten Koreans intend to utilize these products.
The Ministry is preparing for a new leap to embed this system more deeply into people's daily lives. It currently provides location-based services so consumers can more easily find information on 755 nationwide retailers via mobile devices, while planning to dramatically improve accessibility by continuously expanding the number of retailers. The Ministry will also strengthen business operator training to thoroughly protect valuable health information collected during consultations, ensuring consumers can use the service with confidence.
Furthermore, the Ministry plans to widely promote the system's advantages so more consumers can utilize customized services, and actively support the system's evolution into an even more innovative framework based on operational experience. It takes time for new systems to take root in society. This system has just taken its first steps, but it holds sufficient potential to transform people's healthy daily lives.
As a reliable partner in the era of 100-year lifespans, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety will concentrate all its capabilities on creating a safe and innovative environment where all citizens can enjoy healthy lives.
